Hurricanes Past

Today's Thoughts By Jeff Head 10/31/12 Hurricanes Past

I was home the other day, just a few days before Hurricane Sandy struck the North East. I pulled up the weather map on the computer, thought about it for about two seconds; then booked a load as far west as I could get. “No,” I said, talking to my wife. “I just do not want to go through that again.”  I was not even going to write about it and have not for years because of the memories of hurricanes past that both my wife and I worked, Katrina being one of them. But as I was doing a little surfing instead of sleeping, I came across a post saying that Republicans do not even want to stir up this political pot after the bad job Bush did years ago. Years ago, I remember that, we were there, right in the middle of it. The press and the Democrats hammering on President Bush for the lousy job he was doing. Well, here is an account that not many will tell you about how that went.

Janet and I felt so lucky that we were headed to Florida to help out with FEMA and disaster relief, a chance to help those that just had their world blown away. It was not long though before we found out what it was all really about. Our first task was to take food into a shelter, unload, and then wait to be told where to go to next. Easy enough it would seem until they lost us and let us sit there for a week. Call after call we made and no one would move us, they were waiting for FEMA to tell them to bring us back. Or were they?

While we were there, My wife and I helped the locals get water out of a water tanker that was being dropped but no way was left for anyone to get the water. So we made our selves useful. Easy enough until we got back to the fair grounds were we told every one of our good deeds and promptly got our butts chewed out for helping.  You see, by me helping, according to the things I was learning, I was shorting the time that others could get paid thousands of dollars a day. For us it was about helping out the victims of the disaster, for others it was about the cash.

So I watched as time went by, over a year of working the hurricanes being as I spent six months on Katrina alone, as people figured out every way possible to stretch out their task to pad their pockets. Everyone from FEMA personnel to the contractors, few were left out of this big government money grab. And the ones that went in to help, that were more interested in helping those in need, we were the problem child. You see instead of telling them that we could not run our trucks today after six weeks of not doing a thing, we actually did what we were asked to do. We ended up getting destroyed. We were hurting their gravy train. Remember I said form the top all the way down this would happen.

As for Bush and the job he did. I watched as they sent twenty trucks that had been sitting around for weeks doing nothing down to an airport, lined them up in a row, and waited for a helicopter to land behind them while they took a photo op. Then they released us.  From there we found ourselves taking truck loads of good up and down the east coast of Florida. Town after town lining us up and making us turn on all our lights and flashers.  They would convoy us twice around the town square so that even more pictures could be taken. Then we would be set up in the parking lot of an open store just to hand out the very products the store was open and selling.  All the local politicians wanted people to know who to vote for next time. The funny thing about this was the press and the Democrats were hammering Bush for not getting enough stuff in place fast enough. People were starving, or were they?

I remember the longer that this went on, the sillier it got.  We would take in a load of water and the locals would turn it back if It was not a designer brand name on the bottle, they would not drink it.  Food was the same way. Anything we took them after a while had to be the right brand or no sale. All the while Bush was getting hammered for not doing a good job.

I watched trucks by the thousands sit for days at airports and fair grounds waiting to move anything that was needed.  I know one ware house over ten thousand square feet that was abandoned full of plastic, ice being left out to melt, water destroyed because no one would take it. Bush shoved so much into these areas to try to keep the press off his back it was not funny. All that came out of a Bush being forced to cover his butt was a complete waste of tax dollars. And I am here to tell you, there was no shortage of people in there sucking those dollars up. That’s why I can no longer work hurricanes, I go in to help the people, not to drag out the task as long as possible to keep that high dollar paycheck coming in. Once again I found myself singled out standing in front of the crowd demanding to do the work. I just do not have it in me to do it again. It is too dangerous. For months on end I wondered if I would survive, if I would make it home alive.

Not everyone was like this. Not every town. I spent four days in Bon Wier, Tx and to this day I remember the people there. As they would come through the line and we would hand them two meals, they would give one back and say save it for the next guy. Instead of packing their cars with free government stuff, they thought about the needs of others. They took care of each other the way decent human beings should.  A oasis in a world of all for me and lets suck all we can out of this disaster and the government.

This will get political, it has to, no matter what side you’re on the idea is to take out the other. I’m sorry but that is what people do in these situations. It is what I seen with my own eyes. From the little guy on the street all the way up to national politics.  And folks like me that do not know how to play this game, that think we are going to go in there and actually help someone; we  will get destroyed by the pure greed by the real storm that this is about to turn into. That lesson I will never forget.

Be safe peeps.

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